Blaise Pascal & the Jesuits

[Charlemagne_II]

Can someone briefly explain to me what it was about the moral theology of the Jesuits that so incensed the Catholic mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal?

 

[tractarian]

In a word: casuistry, “reasoning used to resolve moral problems by applying theoretical rules to particular instances” (def. from Wikipedia since for some reason there doesn’t seem to be an article devoted to the topic in the Catholic Encyclopedia).

As a branch of moral and pastoral theology, Jesuits didn’t invent casuistry and they were far from the only priests associated with it, but they did employ it a lot as a tool for Confession and spiritual direction.

Pascal always hated casuistry and he made the Jesuits his prime (really his sole) target. I think he was concerned that taking such a practical approach to ethics would harm the principles and eventually end up teaching lax morals.

The situation isn’t dissimilar from “Situational Ethics”, which really is all the bad things that Pascal attributed to casuistry.

 

[o_mlly]

In a word: casuistry, “reasoning used to resolve moral problems by applying theoretical rules to particular instances” (def. from Wikipedia since for some reason there doesn’t seem to be an article devoted to the topic in the Catholic Encyclopedia).

As a branch of moral and pastoral theology, Jesuits didn’t invent casuistry and they were far from the only priests associated with it, but they did employ it a lot as a tool for Confession and spiritual direction.

Pascal always hated casuistry and he made the Jesuits his prime (really his sole) target. I think he was concerned that taking such a practical approach to ethics would harm the principles and eventually end up teaching lax morals.

The situation isn’t dissimilar from “Situational Ethics”, which really is all the bad things that Pascal attributed to casuistry.

I understand casuistry to be nothing more than arguing forward – from cause to effect – as opposed to backwards – from observable effects to their probable causes. Nothing inherently sinister about casuistry although some attach negative connotations to the term.

Pascal was philosophically more a Deist than a Catholic in his thinking, e.g. “Pascal’s Wager” is less a leap of faith than a “cover my *ss” philosophy on the existence of God, IMHO.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

*Pascal was philosophically more a Deist than a Catholic in his thinking, e.g. “Pascal’s Wager” is less a leap of faith than a “cover my *ss” philosophy on the existence of God, IMHO. *

Can covering one’s as* not lead to a leap of faith?

Do some people get married not because of any great faith in their partner, but more because they didn 't want to get left out in the cold? Yet after that leap, they can find themselves able to make the other leap of finding true love in their hearts.

God might use any means to draw us toward Him. I think virtually every atheist on his deathbed becomes a deist … though at that point it might be too little too late? Yet, who knows the desperate intensity of a dying confession?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

tractarian

*The situation isn’t dissimilar from “Situational Ethics”, which really is all the bad things that Pascal attributed to casuistry. *

Would you say that the Jesuits haven’t really changed since Pascal’s days?

I wonder what would have set them off in that direction and kept them going in that direction. I thought the Jesuits were originally supposed to be the Pope’s men. And surely the popes would be the preservers of objective ethics, rather than the advancers of “situation ethics.”

 

[Joe_Kelley]

As I recall Pascal was associated with the Jansenists, though not a member of that movement. That probably led him to a somewhat puritanical view on many things, though I don’t think he ever crossed the line into heresy.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Charles S. MacKenzie in his *Pascal’s Anguish and Joy *relates that Pascal’s opposition to the Jesuits was that they were anxious to convert Protestants to the faith, and would therefore make it seem in their evangelizing efforts that Catholicism was not so hard a religion to swallow as they feared. Thus the diluting of morals, the willingness to embrace a liberal interpretation of the moral law that would accomodate itself to the times by rationalizing the easier moral stance on many issues. The Jesuits, for example, had apparently found a way to justify dueling … something that appalled Pascal as he was deeply opposed to violence of all kinds.

Yet it seems to me that today the Jesuits have been among those who have most vigorously opposed militarism (violence) in all its forms. Have the Jesuits evolved away from the image Pascal had of them?

 

[tractarian]

I don’t think many contemporary Jesuits have much in common with their forebears, so Pascal’s criticisms of them aren’t widely applicable to Jesuits-now versus Jesuits-then.

Situational Ethics as it sprang up in the 20th century was from some Anglican priest whose name I forget: no direct connection with casuistry among Catholic confessors and handbooks of moral doctrine (which, depending on the author, could be employed make Catholic ethics appear stricter than necessary or less strict).

 

[Student09]

As I recall Pascal was associated with the Jansenists, though not a member of that movement. That probably led him to a somewhat puritanical view on many things, though I don’t think he ever crossed the line into heresy.

That is correct. Pascal was closely involved with Jansenism, which was later condemned as a heresy, though that was after Pascal’s death and I am sure that he never meant to be anything but a faithful Catholic. To me it seems the Jansenist/Jesuit thing was a classic case of one group being alarmed at certain tendencies in another group, and reacting by going to the opposite extreme …

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Situational Ethics as it sprang up in the 20th century was from some Anglican priest whose name I forget:

I believe you are thinking of Joseph Fletcher. As I recall, in ethics he was a subjectivist and supported euthanasia and abortion.

 

[tractarian]

That is correct. Pascal was closely involved with Jansenism, which was later condemned as a heresy, though that was after Pascal’s death and I am sure that he never meant to be anything but a faithful Catholic. To me it seems the Jansenist/Jesuit thing was a classic case of one group being alarmed at certain tendencies in another group, and reacting by going to the opposite extreme …

Yeah, Pascal’s good name was saved by the fact that his beliefs were still open questions during his lifetime; even some of the opinions of St. Augustine of Hippo were declared “errors” centuries after his death and that’s no fault to him (similarly Aquinas who argued against the Immaculate Conception centuries before the Church pronounced otherwise).

If there was a more general Jansenist vs. Jesuit theological debate going on, then the Jansenists could be seen as continuing the debate carried out by the (Thomist) Scholastics against the (Molinist) Jesuits earlier. In the grace vs. free will debate in theology, Thomism is about as close to Calvinism (i.e. emphasizing grace first and free will second) as one can get and stay w/in the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy; Jansenism, it was later decided, went to far and spilled into Calvinism. (Thomism and Jansenism were both ways to make St. Augustine’s teachings on the relationship between grace & free will in a fully systematic theology, something Augustine himself never completed in his lifetime.)

Molinism, a mainly Jesuit school of thought, had free will as its starting point so the emphasis in theology naturally leaned the other way.

Just as in the debates between their Protestant counterparts (the grace-emphasizing Calvinism vs. the free-will-emphasizing Arminianism), I wouldn’t be surprised if a well-intentioned concern about being “too extreme” lay at the heart of the argument: Thomists and then Jansenists concerned that Jesuit emphasis on free will would lead to a diminished view of God’s majesty, and lax morals; Jesuits concerned that diminishing the role of free will and individual’s conscience too much would lead to discouragement, scrupulosity, the wrong kind of fear of God that forgets God’s love, etc. etc. It’s an argument that hasn’t really ended between Catholics and within other Christian communities.

 

[Student09]

(similarly Aquinas who argued against the Immaculate Conception centuries before the Church pronounced otherwise).

Just to clarify, Aquinas did argue that Mary was purified from all sin including original sin while she was in the womb. He just didn’t think it was at conception because he thought the human soul was infused some time after conception, and up until then there was just organic matter (like what some feminists insist today, ha ha). He did believe that when Mary’s soul was infused into her body, it was immaculate.

The difference is that we now know that this happens at conception, not later as Aquinas thought.

It’s an argument that hasn’t really ended between Catholics and within other Christian communities.

Yes, I’ve noticed!

 

[Charlemagne_II]

I’vew noticed a pattern developing through history, and even within this thread, of a theological tension between the Dominicans and the Jesuits.

The pattern manifests itself in other areas as well. For example, the Dominicans are promoting the sainthood cause of Savonarola, a dominican monk who stood up against Pope Alexander VI (demanding a Council and Church reform) and was executed (hung and burned) for his trouble. From what I’ve heard, the Jesuits oppose Savonarola as a figure unworthy of sainthood … largely on the strength of his supposed willful disobedience to Alexander VI.

Savonarola was before Pascal, but it seems that he too in his writings and preaching inveighed against the laxity of morals that Pascal objected to and that he (Pascal) perceived as promoted by the Jesuits.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

. .
Situational Ethics as it sprang up in the 20th century was from some Anglican priest whose name I forget: no direct connection with casuistry among Catholic confessors and handbooks of moral doctrine (which, depending on the author, could be employed make Catholic ethics appear stricter than necessary or less strict).

Maybe the formalization of the belief was then, but the practice extends at least back as far Genesis 20 when Abraham passed Sarah off as his sister to save his neck.